Lise Davidsen in Recital with James Baillieu
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Mon 10 Feb, Hall Feb, Mon 10 Lise Davidsen in recital with James Baillieu Mon 10 Feb 7.30pm Barbican Hall Part of Barbican Presents 2019–20 Lise Davidsen in recital 1 Ray Burmiston/Decca Classics Burmiston/Decca Ray Important information Mon 10 Feb, Hall Feb, Mon 10 When does the I’m running late! Please… concert start Latecomers will be Switch any watch and finish? admitted if there is a alarms and mobile The concert begins at suitable break in the phones to silent during 7.30pm and finishes at performance. the performance. about 9.15pm, with a 20-minute interval. Please don’t… Use a hearing aid? Need a break? Take photos or Please use our induction You can leave at any recordings during the loop – just switch your time and be readmitted if performance – save it hearing aid to T setting there is a suitable break for the curtain call. on entering the hall. in the performance, or during the interval. Looking for Looking for Carrying bags refreshment? the toilets? and coats? Bars are located on Levels The nearest toilets, Drop them off at our free -1, G and 1. Pre-order including accessible cloak room on Level -1. interval drinks to beat the toilets, are located on queues. Drinks are not Levels -1 and 1. There is Lise Davidsen in recital allowed in the hall. a further accessible toilet on Level G. 2 Welcome to tonight’s performance Mon 10 Feb, Hall Feb, Mon 10 Tonight we’re thrilled to introduce Maria Stuart is a late cycle, and has a Lise Davidsen in this, her Barbican spareness to it that sets its dramatic subject recital debut. matter in sharp relief. The young Norwegian soprano has been We then take a trip to the Nordic countries, making waves over the past few years with songs by Grieg, inspired by his wife with wins at prestigious vocal competitions Nina, and Sibelius. Among them there’s a and an exclusive recording contract. She real treat: the tone-poem Luonnotar in its has proved herself a natural in the opera rarely heard guise for voice and piano. house in repertoire ranging from Weber via Lise Davidsen closes with a sequence of Wagner to Richard Strauss. songs by Richard Strauss (who, like Grieg, Her recital, for which she is joined at the was inspired by his wife), which range from piano by James Baillieu, is strikingly wide- the well-known to rarities, not least ‘Malven’, ranging. She begins with a selection of his very last song, written the year before Brahms songs that span most of his career, he died. and ranges from youthful optimism to a It promises to be a wonderful concert: I hope sense of tender resignation. Schumann’s you enjoy it. Huw Humphreys Head of Music Programme produced by Harriet Smith All information correct at time of printing Lise Davidsen in recital Advertising by Cabbell (tel 020 3603 7930) 3 Lise Davidsen in recital with James Baillieu Mon 10 Feb, Hall Feb, Mon 10 Mon 10 Feb 7.30pm Barbican Hall Brahms ‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’, Op 105 No 4 ‘Da unten im Tale’, WoO33 No 6 ‘Mädchenlied’, Op 107 No 5 ‘Liebestreu’, Op 3 No 1 ‘Von ewiger Liebe’, Op 43 No 1 Schumann Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, Op 135 Sibelius Luonnotar, Op 70 interval 20 minutes Sibelius Five Songs, Op 37 Grieg ‘Dereinst, Gedanke Mein’, Op 48 No 2 ‘Zur Rosenzeit’, Op 48 No 5 ‘Ein Traum’, Op 48 No 6 R Strauss ‘Zueignung’, Op 10 No 1 ‘Allerseelen’, Op 10 No 8 ‘Die Georgine’, Op 10 No 4 ‘Wiegenlied’, Op 41 No 1 ‘Malven’, TrV297 ‘Befreit’, Op 39 No 4 ‘Cäcilie’, Op 27 No 2 Lise Davidsen soprano James Baillieu piano Part of Barbican Presents 2019–20 Lise Davidsen in recital 4 Programme notes Mon 10 Feb, Hall Feb, Mon 10 For texts see page 10 What is lieder? Quite simply lied (plural lieder) is the Johannes Brahms (1833–93) German word for ‘song’. Usually it ‘I have never before experienced such pleasure involves just one singer and a pianist, from hearing lieder sung as I did yesterday though figures such as Mahler and evening.’ So confided a young Brahms just into Wagner used it to refer to song his twenties to Clara Schumann after listening with orchestral accompaniment. to Schubert’s song-cycle Die schöne Müllerin. It’s a genre that was at its most popular in ‘How one immerses oneself in these lieder.’ the 19th century and, in the hands of the Throughout his career Brahms wrote songs finest composers, it can have an intensity that consciously followed the tradition set by that rivals the greatest string quartets. Schubert. That intensity can be found in a single In all, Brahms published some 380 songs for lied or, even more so, in song-cycles. one, two and four voices; of these, about 300 are for solo voice and piano. Great German- ‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’ (In the churchyard) was composed in the summer of 1886 while language song-cycles the composer was staying in Switzerland. It’s Winterreise by Schubert tells the tale a sombre setting of a poem by Detlev von of a traveller who, thwarted in love, Liliencron, a poet whom other composers undertakes a harrowing winter’s journey passed by – wisely, some would say – but from which there can be no return. for Brahms a walk through the churchyard matches the mood of resignation (or perhaps Frauenliebe und -leben by Schumann acceptance) that seems to colour his later life. is a sequence of eight songs which The final line ‘Auf allen Gräbern taute still: begins with a young woman falling in Genesen’ (Silent dew on each grave proclaimed: love and ends with her widowhood. Released) suggests that all who lie asleep in their In between comes engagement, coffins now are somehow released from life. marriage and childbirth. The sentiments And the venerable German chorale known in expressed may be old-fashioned but English as O sacred head now wounded is subtly the music is eternally captivating. woven into the piano part, hinting at sacrifice and redemption. An die ferne Geliebte Beethoven is not primarily known for his songs ‘Da unten im Tale’ (Down there in the valley), but with this cycle (which translates as which was published posthumously, is a part ‘To the distant beloved’) he invented of what might be described as Brahms’s last the concept of the song-cycle. song-cycle, 49 settings of traditional songs, in this case, four simple verses in Bavarian German. In Hugo Wolf took the song-cycle his lifelong concern with folk song Brahms shows to new levels of psychodrama by himself a child of his age, a time when traditional swapping narrative for settings songs and stories were collected and published dedicated to great poets – notably by the Brothers Grimm, Achim von Arnim and Goethe, Mörike and Eichendorff. Clemens Brentano – all of them searching for a Lise Davidsen in recital particularly German identity. In each of Brahms’s settings there is a tension between remaining 5 Mon 10 Feb, Hall Feb, Mon 10 true to the melodic shapes and traditions of the Robert Schumann (1810–56) original and making something personal of it. Britain threads its way through the music of ‘Da unten im Tale’ is undoubtedly ‘re-created’ many 19th-century German composers, from musically, but its roots are unmistakably German. Beethoven’s Scottish songs to Mendelssohn’s ‘Mädchenlied’ (A young girl’s song) is one of orchestral forays into the Highlands. five songs (Op 107) completed in 1886 and so It began with James MacPherson’s Ossian belongs to the composer’s maturity. The piano poems, which were invented rather than part is deceptively simple, with clear echoes of traditional as the poet maintained, but a spinning wheel as the young woman prepares nevertheless seduced leading European her wedding outfit while her voice struggles to Romantics, including Herder and Goethe. Then find its own identity, for the thread she weaves is there was Walter Scott, whose writings, like also the thread of Fate. As so often in Brahms’s Byron’s, were read from one end of Europe later work, less is more, yet the sudden rush of to the other and translated into music for the feeling in the line ‘Wofür soll ich spinnen?’ (What opera house and the concert hall. But for am I spinning for?) would melt the iciest heart. many German artists it was perhaps Schlegel’s By way of contrast ‘Liebestreu’ (True love), remarkable translations of Shakespeare and composed in the early 1850s, is one of the most Schiller’s drama Maria Stuart that sealed a accomplished of Brahms’s early songs. An cultural bond with Britain. From Schumann to apparent simplicity conceals the composer’s Richard Strauss via Brahms two heroines in art in this dialogue between a mother and particular regularly take to the concert platform, daughter with the voice sometimes imitating and Ophelia and Mary, Queen of Scots. sometimes duetting directly with the bass piano Schumann’s Gedichte der Königin Maria part. Hints of opera, elegant counterpoint and Stuart – settings of five poems, supposedly rhythmic variety are all packed into a short lyric written by Mary Stuart herself and translated that the great song authority Eric Sams regarded from French into German by Gisbert von Vinke – as close to a masterpiece: ‘For sheer musical is among the composer’s very last compositions. gift and intellectual force in a young composer They were completed in 1852, not long before nothing had been heard like it since Schubert …’ his attempt to drown himself in the Rhine and his ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ (Eternal love) has its roots admission to the asylum at Endenich where he in traditional music, but this time Slav rather than died in 1856.